Book Review: Against Death and Time

A lethal year for racing.

Against Death and Time is the tale of one deadly season, 1955, a year when race-car drivers believed it was safer, during a rollover, "to wear the car" rather than a seatbelt. It was a year of postwar naïveté and outsize recklessness, in which Bill Vukovich, Alberto Ascari, Pierre Levegh, and James Dean—among many others—died in horrible wrecks. Multiply Princess Di's crash by four, and you have a feel for what sort of year it was.

In fact, of the 33 men who climbed into cars at the start of the '55 Indy 500, 18 would die violent deaths in races, three before the year concluded. All of the top five finishers were doomed.

Vukovich, a.k.a. the "Mad Russian," a.k.a. the "Fresno Flash," died when his royal-blue Hopkins vaulted Indy's wall and burned. Levegh met an equally fiery demise at Le Mans, although his death seemed almost inconsequential after his Mercedes' front axle and engine scythed into the grandstands, killing between 80 and 100 fans. (The exact toll was not revealed, for fear it would dampen tourism.) Italian world champ Ascari, test-driving a pal's car at Monza, crashed and died under mysterious circumstances. And film legend Dean, driving a Porsche 550 Spyder he hoped to race in Salinas, California, T-boned a two-door Ford en route. Dean's last words: "That guy up there has gotta see us. He's gotta stop." That guy's name was Donald Turnipseed, and he did not.

Despite the title, the book isn't a shopping list of fatalities. The death stories are interspersed with public reactions. Yates recalls a Democratic senator who demanded that President Eisenhower ban all racing. And he points out that the AAA's withdrawal from racing—for fear it would be tarnished by the carnage—became a golden opportunity for a stock-car fan named Bill France.

There's even some great gossip. In his research, Yates dug up a conversation in which James Dean told a friend: "They said a Porsche is too cramped to get it on with a girl. That's bullshit. If you don't believe me, ask Natalie." As in Wood.

This book, Yates's 16th, lays bare a fascinating cross section of car racing and kitschy Americana in the mid-'50s, with special emphasis on Indy and on a generation of absurdly macho men who went looking for danger even after they'd survived the planet's most dangerous war. It may well be Yates's best writing—forceful, colorful, opinionated, often funny, a history book that brings history alive through multiple deaths. Which is quite a trick. Against Death and Time is a must-have in any car enthusiast's library.